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[[Holographic Breakthrough:GE scientists discover capacity to put 500GB on a CD-sized disc]]
[[Produced by Vivek Kemp for GE Reports]]
[[Narrator] In this information age we are deluged by data constantly.]
[Everything from downloads, to DVDs, to video games ]
[and photos, we're slammed with information. ]
[And as demand for all things digital grows, ]
[the challenge is finding a way to store it all. ]
[Thanks to a breakthrough in holographic data storage, scientists at GE's]
[Global Research Center say they are one giant step]
[closer to meeting that challenge. ]
[They've discovered a way to fit 500GB onto a single]
[To give you an idea, 500GB is nearly]
[4000 times more information than the human brain]
[Just one of these holographic discs is equivalent to more than]
[Brian Lawrence manages the storage project. ]
[So, traditional media, as we see here--here's an example of a CD]
[or this could be a DVD--but what you see is there's a metal layer in here. ]
[It's at that metal layer where we, in fact, store the information.]
[The metal layer, in this case, will be virtually at the center of the disc]
[In the case of a holographic disc like you have here, we're no longer]
[stuck to the surface of the disc, whether it's at the surface ]
[or in the middle of the disc. ]
[In fact, now we're going to actually use the entire volume.]
[And the way we're going to do that is we're going to use light to create chemical changes]
[in the disc that act as patterns that give us reflected signal.]
[[Narrator] The goal is to develop discs that will hold ]
[a terabyte or more of information.]
[And while the pursuit of next-generation capacity is exciting, ]
[for Brian, science is about challenging]
[In our case, it's how do we store the world's information, and]
[do it in a way that's going to last and that people know it's going to be there?]
[We're solving very, very challenging technical problems]
[in doing the work that we do. ]
[But at the end of the day, what we want is for that to matter. ]
[[GE imagination at work] For GE reports, this is Vivek Kemp.]
